Who can participate

We are looking for great coders no matter the status, age, gender or background.

What are the prizes?

Participants who solve any five issues will receive a digital certificate and a free conference pass to the FOSSASIA Summit 2024.
There are three prize categories. The winners of the prizes will be selected by the jury members based on their contributions during the contest.
* Category 1: Collaboration Catalyst - 20 x Coder Surprise Packages
Apart from good code contributions a winner in this category will show a particular ability to effectively collaborate with others. You will show an outstanding mindset to foster a positive open-source community by supporting newbies to join the contest, reviewing the work of others, and helping others with PRs, e.g. contributors who are stuck with a pull request.
* Category 2: Open Source Pioneer - 10 x Professional Online Software Development Courses
A winner in this category would showcase their excellent coding ability by making pioneering contributions. You demonstrate excellent debugging skills, finding and fixing issues in the most effective and efficient manner.
* Category 3: Code Excellence - 3 x Trips to the FOSSASIA Summit 2024 (Value of 600 USD each)
A winner in this category would show important and continuous code contributions that have a substantial impact on the functionality, usability, or overall improvement of projects in the CodeHeat contest.

How are the Winners chosen?

On March 31, participants should submit a Gist with a list of the work outcome to be reviewed by the Jury.
Because some issues are more challenging than others just by the nature of the type of issues (for example, heavy coding versus solving a text typo bug), it is entirely possible that someone who completed 11 issues could be chosen as a Winner over someone who completed 15 issues, if they are both among the top 10 contributors.

How to contribute code in the contest?

* At first developers sign up on a Google form here to participate.
* Then join the FOSSASIA org on GitHub through this link here.
* Each developer then searches for issues labeled Codeheat that interests them and claims ownership of a particular issue. The developer works on the issue and if there are questions asks on the chat channel of the project. The main channel for decision-making is however always the GitHub issue itself.
* Once finished, the developers make a pull request from his/her own forked repository to the development branch of the project and submit their work for review.
* Pull requests need to pass Travis builds, code CI tests and ensure migrations work.
* Mentors and maintainers from the organization evaluate the work submitted. If the work is accepted, the developer earns 1 point for each accepted pull request and 1 point if they close an issue. So you could earn two points if you close an issue with a pull requests. [Please Note: Sometimes developers try to “beat the system” by submitting lots of small improvements as pull requests. Please consider that the jury is mainly interested in the substantiality and quality of code contributions and the sheer number is not the main criteria.]
* After the pull request has been merged developers can claim another issue to work on if they wish.
* If the work needs polishing, the task remains open and the core-developer may give the submitter additional time and guidance on improving their work.
* If the work does not meet expectations, the task can be reopened for another developer contestant to claim and work on.
Please follow FOSSASIA Best Practices to achieve the desired outcome.

What other contributions are part of the contest?

Other contributions in the contest are peer reviews, support others to join the contest and learn to contribute to open source projects and sharing some info on social media. The following contributions from participants in the contest would be great:
* Support other participants by answering questions on the FOSSASIA gitter
* Share information about the contest on social media
* Create a Gist with a list of the work outcome at the end of the contest

Why should developers participate in the contest?

The idea of the contest is to introduce developers to the FOSSASIA projects and to provide an opportunity to build up their development profile, learn how to work according to Best Development Practices and ultimately become part of the development team. The contest also provides an entry point and preparation for future coding programs like the FOSSASIA Google Summer of Code.
Many young developers are not yet deeply familiar with Open Source and the contest is an easy way to get involved in this international community of developers, who want to help you learn and succeed. The contest is a gateway to learning new skills as well as learning to work in a collaborative software development team. At the end of the contest, developers can show their friends, teachers, co-developers and family members the work they did on public repositories and the project applications itself - used by people around the world.

What programming languages do participants need to know?

There are various programming languages used in FOSSASIA projects ranging from web front-end to back-end technologies and Linux technologies. You could even code on hardware firmwares and design hardware as a project. Here are a few languages that are popular: Java, Kotlin, Javascript, HTML, Python, C++, Shell Scripts.

What do I need to do to be among the winners?

For us everyone is a winner, who contributes in whatever way in the community. However, in contest setting there are some points you should fulfil to increase your chances to be a finalist. To be among them, it is important to work according to the FOSSASIA Best Practices and to provide the following:
* Continuous substantial contributions, pull requests, and code reviews
* Participate in chats on the project channels
* Provide a Gist with a list of the work outcome of your work at the end of the contest period you are participating in

Which projects can I work on? Can I also contribute to other FOSSASIA projects as part of the contest?

You can always work on any project in the FOSSASIA GitHub org, that has issues labeled Codeheat.

How can I start working on the project and claim issues that I would like to work on?

We can outline this in three easy steps:
1. Comment on which issue you are working on so another person doesn't work on the same issue.
2. Work on one issue at a time. If you can't solve an issue and want to move on next, comment on the previous issue that it is open for others to take.
3. Send a PR on issues that are marked with the codeheat label. There is no need for approval to work on an issue if you are the only one who commented on the issue to take it up, or it has been several days with no activity since the last person's comment.
Note: If in the process of solving an issue you realize that you are more interested in another issue or find it is not suitable for you, please comment on the issue and mention that it is free to be taken up by others.

When should I claim an issue?

You should claim an issue when you are ready to work on it. Please be careful that you do not just claim an issue that you do not plan to work on immediately after you claimed it. Sometimes we see developers claim an issue and then only start to work on it after several days. This slows down the progress of a project a lot and potentially blocks other developers from making a contribution.

How many issues can I take up at a time?

Please only take up one issue at a time and solve it as quickly as possible after you claimed it. If there is no apparent activity on an issue others are free to take it up or maintainers will solve or assign it to someone else.

What about priority and urgent issues? Can I claim them?

Please be extra cautious about high priority or urgent priority issues. These are issues that need to be solved super quickly as they are very important for the progress of the project. For high priority issues, we want to reduce contention over these issues, so they are solved ASAP. Hence, if no codeheat participant has taken them up, we solve them ourselves. It should be very clear to you that taking up a high/urgent priority issue is a big responsibility in the project, and you should solve it very quickly. Before you claim an issue be sure that you have the knowledge of solving it. If there is no apparent activity on an issue other participants are free to claim them as well.

Can I open an issue and ask maintainers to label it “codeheat”?

We always welcome contributors who test applications and find bugs. This is an integral part of software development. However, usually in Codeheat we focus on solving issues that are already open for some time or issues opened by maintainers. This also helps to stay focused on the current project goals and avoids that developers focus on issues with low priority. Nevertheless, if maintainers consider an issue important they might mark it with the label “codeheat” still.